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If you want to add a little oomph to your urge in speech or writing—and formal oomph at that—we exhort you to try using exhort as a synonym instead. Arriving in the 15th century from the Anglo-French word exorter, exhort traces back further to the Latin verb hortari, meaning “to incite to action, urge on, or encourage.” Latin users added the prefix ex- to hortari to intensify it; in essence, exhortari is a succinct way of saying “to really, really urge.” The Latin words adhortari (its meaning similar to that of exhortari) and dehortari (“to dissuade”) also found their way into English as adhort and dehort, respectively, but neither of these remains in current use.
Examples of exhort in a Sentence
Doreen St. Félix,
New Yorker,
27 June 2026
Even so, Bozzo exhorted the community to continue relying on the city and gathering in spaces that felt safer, like churches or city-run events.
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Luis Melecio-Zambrano,
Mercury News,
28 May 2026
In the press box at halftime, Congolese journos exhort the team in French and Lingala, a Bantu language native to their homeland.
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Franklin Leonard,
Vanity Fair,
14 May 2026
His firm, Strategy, has a business based around acquiring Bitcoin, with Saylor using his outsize social media presence to post memes exhorting others to do the same.
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Jack Kubinec,
Fortune,
27 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for exhort
Cite this Entry
“Exhort.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exhort. Accessed 29 Jun. 2026.
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